


deeper inside than marrow

by bloodletter



Category: Utopia (TV 2013)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Episode: s02e01, F/M, Loyalty, Scarification, wound fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 08:17:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16343198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodletter/pseuds/bloodletter
Summary: Blood loss is no deterrent when she’s involved.





	deeper inside than marrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arbitrarily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/gifts).



(Following Stalin’s purges, young Soviet professionals were able to scale ranks in government and industry much faster than they ever would have before, filling the positions left by predecessors lost to the firing squad and gulag. Of course, those lucky ones would be subjected to their own culls before too long. 

The two of them weren’t in quite the same position, but he had spared a few thoughts for the possibility that their successes thus far were due to their position on the cusp of a zeitgeist approaching its tumbling.)

 

 

He wakes to the shift of a silhouette across the blinds. It’s her, of course.

She lets herself in through the set of keys she keeps in one of the many inner pockets in the lining of her coat. He would get up to meet her at the door, but it’s not possible in his current state. He manages to sit up in bed, at least, by the time she makes it to the bedroom door.

She forgoes any greeting, just bends over him like a redheaded angel of mercy and unspools the loops of bandages within which he’s cocooned himself. He moves to help her and she bats his hands away.

“Is that healing alright?” Her voice is clipped, but she grasps his shoulder and rubs her thumb in slow circles over it.

“As well as could be expected.” His own voice sounds like it’s been covered in gasoline and set on fire. He hasn’t spoken to a soul since it happened. It’s fitting that she should be the first.

“Can I see it?” 

“Go ahead. Doesn’t look like much yet, though.”

She’s already mostly there, peeling away the last of the bandages, the layers stuck to his chest with congealed blood and plasma. He wishes he could say he doesn’t cry out.

 

 

(When she first told him what she wanted him to do to himself, it was phrased not as a command but as a request. They both knew he'd do it no matter the phrasing. 

She was still in Rome, at the time. He was buried under paperwork, sifting through piles of documents both legitimate and falsified when the phone rang. There was a certain line to which only one person had the number; he picked up immediately. It was as if he’d been waiting on that call for a long time, and he felt mostly relief. The preparations were already in place, in any case.

Immediately after, mostly unconscious and lucidity completely gone from the pain, he dreamt of her hands. They were stained red up to the wrists. She wielded the knife. She wasn't delicate with him, even in dreams. It wasn’t in her nature. He knew it more than most.

He woke from the dream to wet sheets and blood seeping through his bandages. It wasn’t the first time in his career he changed and dressed his own wounds, but it was the most severe.)

 

 

"Can I touch it?" She stands while he sits on the edge of the bed. Her tights have a run in them; an ugly valley rips through the nylon. One hand rests on his shoulder, the other on top of his head, absently fussing with his hair, tucking stray pieces back into order. 

She feels the need to keep him close. It’s the scar, he thinks. She is fascinated by it.

“Why are you asking?” He turns his face up to look at her. "You could just go ahead. I couldn't do much to stop you, not today." Her expression is resolute, features set placidly. Her face was made for looking upon things from above. The room is hazily lit, light coming solely from the lamp on the bedside table. She holds his face between her hands and presses the points of her nails into his cheeks, just barely. He tries to prevent his expression from faltering. Her fingertips track every inch of his skin they can reach, the pads of her thumbs tracing over the edge of his jaw and back across his lips, which are slightly cracked. It is well past two. 

She rests her thumbs on his cheekbones and stares right into his eyes, not leaving them for long seconds. “Because I want to hear you say it.” He’s never heard her voice sound so tight, as if drawn into her chest by some invisible force.

 

 

(The Network was not an organization. It was shells upon shells, inner circles within inner circles. By its very nature, no one knew how close or distant they were from the centre. All, perhaps, except Letan.

They had discussed it, many times, at first only while drinking but more and more frequently. 

“The story has to be good,” he remembered her saying. In heels, the top of her head only reached his chin, yet he still felt as though he was looking up. The light from the desk-lamp shone amber through the decanter glass, the same colour as her hair. “Like something from a movie. They have to know it’s mostly fake. That’s what’ll make them believe the rest of it.”)

 

 

She digs her nails into the still-open gashes, just barely scabbed over, and he flinches, curving inward. “What did you think about?” He can hear breathlessness in her voice, and she jerks her fingertips even deeper into the wound, aggravating the surrounding skin. “I wish I had been there. I wish I could have done it. That’s—ah—how it should have been.” The scar tissue would show prominently whether or not she took the time to do this; he remembers the strokes of the knife—a kind of primal flesh-memory he will carry forever—and cuts like that don’t just go away. In places, the cuts are deep enough for her to slip a fingertip or two into his flesh. She crooks them inside of the wound. The pain sends him deliriously over the edge into a space in which even _he_ is in danger of forgetting his name. 

Even this state, though, he understands her. Philip is in Rome, to be escorted in the morning to the Pennsylvania lab indefinitely, and she needs to be able to control something. Everything but the two of them is spinning out of her grasp. Her eyes are wide and terrible in the half-light. He is bound to her by nine years of familiarity, the myth they made together, and a litany of shared secrets: of anyone in the world, what would he get out of betraying her? There’s little enough for him to fall back on. She even owns his body, now.

 

 

(“Can you believe the luck we’ve had with him?” One of her hands held her glass by the stem, and the other clenched, claw-like, over her knees through her skirt. “I never—we never thought it would go anywhere, did we? And now look at us. Look at this.”

“He still seems unreliable.”

She tapped her chin with her index finger, gazing at him with a fond sort of derision, and replied, “You’ve told me. Once or twice.”

She split the last of the wine between their glasses, and he couldn’t help but notice the burgundy was just a shade or two off the colour of her jacket. So much red.)

 

 

There are no proclamations of love or loyalty from him, that time or ever. There’s no need. Instead—things unfold: limbs, clothing. Her undergarments are simply functional; no surprise there. He’s imagined something like this, before, of course, but being confronted with her naked self, skin bearing faint impressions of the seams of her clothes, is different. He’s seen bits and pieces of her body over the years; it isn’t the nakedness so much as the knowledge she’s undressing in front of (though certainly not _for_ ) him. She sheds her shoes one at a time, dropping in height at first on one side and then the other.

It is in every way inevitable. It feels like they’ve done it before, though he’d certainly remember if they had. Her knees shift on the mattress like she’s balancing on a raft in whitewater. The only source of light seeps in through a crack in the bathroom door, a flickering bulb on the other side, almost dead, casting them both in dimness with just enough light to keep his eyes from adjusting. They’d be better off in the dark.

She isn’t careful with him, though she does balance as much of her weight as possible on her knees on the mattress rather than resting on him. The only place they’re connected is where their hips meet. There, and the grip she has on his arms, holding them down with no real strain to it. Instead, her left thumb runs over the place on the inside of his elbow where the arteries run visibly below the surface before dipping back down again. She rubs the spot where the blue blood shows. Scientific curiosity, rather than a threat. She’s still capable of tenderness, then, whether or not she knows what she’s doing. 

The pain is dulled enough, his body pushed far enough, that the pain feels like something happening to another person. The sex, somewhat likewise. She fucks herself on his body, he holds her in place, a hand on her hip, her wrist small enough to fit within the grasp of one of his hands. He’s surprised, in some distant place at the back of his mind, that he’s even able to get it up, but apparently blood loss is no deterrent when she’s involved. 

She comes with a scrabble of unadorned fingernails across his back, her face pressed against his neck, and he doesn’t do anything as romantic as follow her along, but he does finish, somehow, somewhere along the way, with tremours all through his frame, like the aftermath of electrical shock. He falls asleep almost immediately; it may be classified as fainting, but when one’s already in a bed, does it really make a difference?

 

 

(Letan—or, really, Milner’s—home was a curious place to be. He had a key, and could let himself in if he ever needed to, as he did then, but he never completely adjusted to it.

His umbrella, hanging from his limp arm, dripped rainwater onto the welcome mat as he waited for her. It didn’t take long; she came out of the hallway in a bathrobe and bare feet. Her hair stuck to her neck from the shower water, and she gazed at him like she was searching for something in his face or posture. He kept his shoes and coat on. It was a home, but not his.

He stepped out from just past the threshold into the room proper and handed her a sealed manila envelope.

“Where’s Tom?” The words came out more sharply than he intended.

She looked him right in the eye, and it was hard not to notice that the circles below her eyes were more pronounced than ever.

“He’s out with a few of the old boys. Uni people.”

He was struck by the fleeting, bizarre impulse to put a hand on her shoulder. Instead, he nodded. Tom needed her, and she craved that total, consuming responsibility, but it took its toll on her. Later on, when he considered Carvel’s unsteady gaze and disheveled personal manner, he could see the similarities, though it was a little like comparing an air rifle to a missile launcher.

It wasn’t always like that; the Assistant first met Tom years earlier, when his edges were showing fray but he was still lucid most of the time. He was an architect by trade, and his plans were sweeping in scale with an eye for minimalism. Letan told the Assistant once that Tom had personally corresponded with Buckminster Fuller. His biggest achievement was a set of plans for some stylish and economical social housing projects, bought but never built. Perhaps in a few decades, under a more generous government, in more prosperous times.

She set the envelope down on a table and went back to patting her hair with a towel, wringing the water out before it could soak into her bathrobe. "How much do you know about genetics?")

 

 

He’s up in the cold hours of the night, the cuts throbbing like they haven’t since they were made. Not the worst pain he’s ever felt, but not far off.

He changes the bandages, takes painkillers, crouches in front of the toilet with his forehead resting against porcelain until he trusts himself to keep it together. There’s only one bed, and when he returns to it he lays on his back, coffin-style, next to her, rather than have to choose whether to face her or look away.

 

 

(Letan told him her other name one evening as they put on their coats to leave the office. 

Her dress sense has been the same as long as he’s known her: smart but never flashy, besides odd touches of whimsy—a red barrette, a school-marm shoe—of which he’s never been able to determine the origin. They both wear the sort of coats with pockets stitched into the lining so nothing they carry is visible to the rest of the world. Handguns, nondescript ID, and official-but-generic access passes are tucked away close to their chests. 

“It’s Milner, really. Though you can call me whatever you like,” she said without looking at him, like an afterthought. “In the right company, of course.” 

“Of course,” he said. He regretted not having the ability to return the gesture, as he had nothing to offer. (She always introduces him as “her assistant”, before and after this conversation. They never discuss it.) His body curved around hers, stooping as they walked, to reduce the gap in height.) 

 

 

He wakes up while she’s in the shower, her things already packed and shoes in a row by the door. There’s a carton of orange juice on the bedside table besides a bottle of nuclear-strength Aspirin: how very domestic.

MI5 has a private airstrip on the outskirts of the city. He gives her a ride before the commuter rush can really start. He can _drive_ , Mr. Rabbit's Chinese battle scar be damned. She falls asleep in her seat on the way to the plane that will take her to Pennsylvania. He stays behind whenever she goes to the Three Mile facility, which is increasingly often, of late. She needs someone to be her hands in London, and the field of trustworthy individuals is dwindling rapidly. Of course, the other reason he stays behind is that Philip becomes even more belligerent in his presence. He is the embodiment of all Philip despises and fears about Milner. If she’s the cloak, he’s the dagger.

There is so much to be done that even her time in transit must be spent on making preparations; nonetheless, he doesn’t wake her.

Her body curls inwards on itself and he learns that she talks while unconscious. Nothing so dramatic or incriminating as the Janus distribution trigger codes or her real name, of course. She mutters under her breath, a litany of instructions and objects, a grocery or packing list, almost. He wonders if Tom has seen her like this. If Carvel has. Not, in either case, that it matters much. He will remember it as a singular moment of fragility that was intended to have no audience.

They will be recorded in no history books. Not only their names but their deeds will be lost to memory. All this and everything else, the accounts of their bodies, the quiet moments between actions. The way her chest rises and falls when she breathes.

Patches of farmland rush past the car on either side. Milner sleeps.

 


End file.
